My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.